AboutLuis Expertise I can answer questions about living and working in Korea for the expatriate felow and family. Anything to do with living and working conditions, business environment and culture, searching for jobs, immigration and civil laws, cost of living and life style, current economy and investing/opening a business. Almost anything the expat needs to know before moving in.
Experience Nearly 7 years of working, living, doing business and helping others settle in Korea. Have helped hundreds of people both through formal training and informal channels.
Organizations Felow of several chambers of commerce and embassies
Publications Local newspapers and chamber of commerce publications, Canadian central government publications on doing business in Korea
Education/Credentials Have a Master's degree on helping foreign companies settle in Korea. I earned it here in Seoul. My in-law Korean family has almost all there is to know on traditions and rituals.
Awards and Honors Have works published on Korean economy.
Past/Present clients Many foreign MNCs and some local companies going abroad
Question We are having an open house at our university conference center. We are a large university of 10,000 and expect about 100 misc people at our gathering-many will not know one another. Should we have name tags? I say yes others say no. Thanks!
Answer Hi Kate:
It all depends on the nature of the event and the purpose you want to achieve, if it's only social and you just want to show people what the school is all about as they are potential applicants, and if they are not already students, each in a major and a department and just coming from all over the place, then name tags will be a major hassle to make, distribute and will not serve much of a purpose.
If there is a way to organize these name tags so they say more than just a name (i.e. department, faculty, major, country, club, interest group, etc) then you will help people to NETWORK, establish relationships between their different departments or groups, and help them be able to contact each other in the future.
Name Tags +s:
Will help people break the ice when they mingle,
Helps people avoid the cumbersome questions "what is your name?"
Helps people avoid the cumbersome question "what group you belong in"
Name Tags -s:
You need to get everyone's name and type them in CORRECTLY, misspelling anyone's name is the most insulting thing people feel in general, the personal name is like a magic word to us and even though we know is unintentional, most people tend to be unforgiving to other who misspell their names.
You need to purchase the tags
You need at least one person at the front entrance distributing them and this person needs to be there before anyone else, (s)he needs to stay behind during most of the event unless all tags go out fast.
Will produce a bottle neck of people at the door scrambling to find each their own name.
Do not produce the simple tag that is hand-written (i.e. you just write the names onto the paper with a marker), in this era of everything being automated, printing them and cutting them out is the way to go, make sure they are big enough to be read at a couple of meters' distance. Handwriting looks so improvised, better not have them at all. However, you need to have a few blank ones and a marker for last minute registrations that you had no time to print, or those no-registration show-uppers.
Just about every business event I attend has pre-printed name tags and these ALWAYS display a second type of information, distinguishing people into groups, such as country of origin, department, etc. You need to identify the group-theme that best suits your event.
